


sweet to tongue and sound to eye

by nex_et_nox



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s01e16 Rogue Time, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, cisco ramon's terrible horrible no good very bad day (that he lived twice)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-06 04:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21220646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nex_et_nox/pseuds/nex_et_nox
Summary: Cisco has been kidnapped by supervillains that are threatening to kill his brother if he doesn’t help them, and that’s not even the worse part of his day.(AKA Vibe’s powers manifest early, the Rogues doesn’t know what is happening, and Eobard Thawne’s plans go off the rails a little sooner than he expected.)





	sweet to tongue and sound to eye

**Author's Note:**

> yes I can and will post a four year old Flash fic despite not even really being in the fandom anymore AND despite having 10 million WIPs
> 
> title from Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

Another lull between the two of them, as Cisco kept fiddling with whatever his stupid inventions were and Dante alternated between staring hard at him, glancing carefully around the room (always _away _from Rory), and trying not to think too hard about what was happening here. Dante thought that his brother was almost finished with these – guns, or whatever they were, but what the hell did he know?

All he knew was that he was kind of afraid to _breathe_ too loud sometimes in this room because of the way that that Rory guy nattered on about flames and fire. The man in the parka – Cold? – seemed to have at least a vaguely more tempered keel, but he still kidnapped Dante and Cisco, so.

Dante’s focus drifted back to his brother, and he realized that Cisco was paused in the middle of his tinkering. Actually paused, like he completely forgot what he was doing and simply hadn’t moved, trying to trace down the train of thought.

“Cisco,” Dante hissed quietly, because he couldn’t believe he was relying on his little brother to save his life. Cisco swore that he could make the guns and save them, but now he’d, what, _forgotten how to do it_, this close to the end? Really?

They were both going to die.

“Cisco,” Dante said again, when Cisco didn’t respond the first time. Then he looked closer at his brother’s face, and his stomach dropped.

Cisco had seemed scared, bartering for their lives, but this was beyond that. This was pure, unadulterated terror, the kind that had sapped all color from his skin and was leaving his hands shaking where they were held in front of him,. Cisco wasn’t looking at anything. He was focused on something beyond Dante, beyond this room, like there was something he could see that no one else could.

“Cisco, hey,” Dante said louder, more urgently, and he forgot that he needed to be paying attention to Rory (or not drawing Rory’s attention to them, as the case may be) because there was something wrong with his brother. Yeah, he might mostly be concerned about trying to get out of this alive and this could destroy their best shot, but at the same time, this was an expression that he had never wanted to see on his little brother’s face.

A door opened behind them. Dante felt his breath freeze in his chest, but he couldn’t look away from his brother’s frozen face.

“So, Ramon,” Cold drawled, striding into the room. “Are our guns almost—?” And he trailed off, obviously seeing the same thing that Dante had. Dante chanced a look at him, to see the furrowed brows as Cold walked over to Cisco and snapped his fingers in front of his face.

No reaction.

“What happened?” Cold barked out. Rory shrugged, and Cold turned to Dante.

“I don’t know,” Dante said. “I swear. He just – stopped. About a minute ago, and he hasn’t done anything since.”

Cold frowned. He grabbed Cisco by the shoulders, pulling him away from the table, and _that _finally got a reaction. Cisco’s eyes regained some kind of focus, like him snapping awake all at once, and Dante didn’t know it was possible, but as Cisco flinched back with a strangled yell, he somehow lost more color. One hand went up to cover his chest. Cold looked utterly perplexed.

“Oh God,” Cisco said, shaking. His hand was pressed hard right over his heart. “Oh my God, he killed me, he killed me—” His voice raised in hysteria.

Cold had a nonplussed expression on his face. Dante didn’t dare move. He didn’t know what Cisco thought he was doing, didn’t know what Cisco thought this plan could accomplish, but he knew that it couldn’t end well.

If Cisco was faking it, though, he was a far better actor than Dante ever took him for. His breath was going quick and shallow, and even from the other side of the table, Dante could see his pupils were blown wide in a way that they definitely weren’t a mere few minutes ago.

“Who?” Cold asked, idly curious, and Cisco’s eyes flitted to him, barely seeming to register who he was. He was swaying on his feet now, one hand still pressed desperately against his chest. Cold took one step toward him and Cisco didn’t do anything other than stare at him, terror and grief and betrayal written all over his face, before he collapsed to the ground.

“Cisco!” Dante yelled.

* * *

Len thought the kid was faking it at first. Ramon was clever; he might have been trying out some convoluted plan to make them let him and his brother go. But his brother’s yell was full of unfeigned fear, and as Len knelt down next to Ramon and pressed fingers to the kid’s wrist, he took in the cool clamminess of his skin, the too fast heartbeat, added it together with how pale the kid was, the enlarged pupils, the hyperventilating…

“Mick,” he said sharply, because his associate should know better than to mess around with the kid before they get what they wanted. Hurt his brother, fine, but Ramon was the one they needed in one piece.

“Wasn’t me,” Mick said, and Len believed him, dammit. More unfortunate than that was the fact that he recognized the symptoms of this. He’d been at too many crime scenes, hurt too many people, to not be able to recognize shock for what it was.

The question was, why the hell was Ramon going into shock in the first place?

_He killed me_.

Ridiculous. And yet.

Len shrugged off his parka and laid it over Ramon in some approximation of a shock blanket before he pulled out his phone and ran a quick search. _First Aid: Shock Treatment_ – just because he’d _seen _it before didn’t mean he automatically knew all the best ways to treat it.

Thank you, WebMD.

Except not really, because apparently Ramon needed a hospital. Damn. If they let him go now, then they’d have to recapture him later, which would be much more difficult if the Flash and the rest of his team were on high alert.

Len glanced at the guns. They were _almost_ done. He and Mick could probably finagle them together the rest of the way themselves, after having learned so much about their guns in the first place by taking them apart over and over. Len would really prefer not to have to bother.

He was about to order Mick to go raid an ambulance somewhere when Ramon’s eyelids flicked and he opened them slowly, obviously dazed. Len wondered if he hit his head on the way down; that would be just their luck.

“Ramon,” Len said intently, leaning over him. He would really like to not have to kidnap the kid again later. “You back with us?”

Ramon blinked confusedly. “Reverse…Flash,” he said, a wealth of emotion in his voice that Len didn’t bother to try to parse. He filed away that name for later.

“Cold, actually,” Len said, gesturing at himself. “As you named me.”

Distrust and confusion danced across Ramon’s face as he obviously tried to remember where exactly he was, and Len watched as comprehension finally dawned. Ramon tried to sit up, flailing and pushing Len’s parka off of him, frantically saying, “Dante!”

Len grabbed him by one arm and hauled him to his feet before he could hurt himself trying, holding onto the kid’s arm to make sure he didn’t fall again. Ramon was still swaying dangerously despite being awake now, and if the kid got a concussion before their guns were done –

Len wanted their guns back, and he wanted them in perfect working condition. Concussed engineers didn’t do their best work.

“Mick,” he said, keeping half his attention focused on the brothers, “Tell Lisa to raid an ambulance. Oxygen, oxygen mask, IV and fluids.”

Ramon weakly tried to shrug himself out of Len’s grasp, but Len didn’t have to bother concentrating to keep his hand wrapped around the kid’s arm with what was probably bruising force. So long as the kid didn’t fall again, Len didn’t much care.

Mick grumbled a bit at being ordered around but left the room. Len looked at Ramon.

“You’re supposed to lie down if you have shock,” Len said.

Ramon met his eyes and said, “Yeah, I know. I work with a doctor.” His voice barely belied how shaky he still was, though his body betrayed him there, doing all the shaking for him. Len would think that it was funny, Ramon almost shivering in front of him, but it wasn’t because of cold, it was because the kid was shocky, and Len _didn’t know why_.

This time, when Ramon tried to shake himself out of Len’s grip, he let him. Ramon leaned heavily against the side of the table but determinedly made his way around the edge of it toward his brother, who let off something in rapid-fire Spanish that made Ramon grin tiredly as he responded, reassurances that were obvious despite being in another language. He settled himself down on the ground, his head next to his brother’s chair, and took slow, even breaths.

Len shrugged his parka back on and waited for Lisa to return.

* * *

Cisco forced himself to take long, slow breaths. Snart had said he was in shock and –yeah, he recognized all the symptoms. There were things that you picked up from working with Caitlin for years (and helping take care of a comatose Barry for nine months), not to mention recognizing symptoms of shock in their line of work was important. It wasn’t surprising that he was in shock, either.

He just died.

Cisco squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried not to let his breath falter in its rhythm – _crushing pain in his chest and he couldn’t breathe as he collapsed to the ground, Eobard Thawne’s words ringing in his ears – _and pointedly tried to think about something else. Anything else.

All he could think about was how bad it was to leave shock untreated. How dangerous of a situation he and Dante were in. How even _if _they managed to escape this, they would never be safe. He would never be safe.

He knew the truth.

He already died for it.

_In many ways, you have shown me what it’s like to have a son._

The question was _how_. That – he could say that it was some kind of waking dream, some kind of nightmare brought upon by stress and not enough sleep that was dragged into the waking world, but it felt too real for that. The details were too crisp, the science he had been fact checking too sound, the crushing pain of his heart too—

Cisco counted the rhythm of his heart for long seconds, too fast but still there. Still beating. He was alive. He was still alive.

But _how_?

He died, he knows that he did. There was no way that he could have survived that, no way that he could have woken up from that even with immediate assistance, and if he’d had that assistance, he wouldn’t have come to _here_, being forced to build weapons for the Rogues.

At the same time, there was no way to convince himself it was a dream. He _knew _that it happened. He knew exactly what had brought him to that point: he’d asked Caitlin to distract Dr. Wells by taking him to Jitters while Barry was at work, trying to find Mardon after his attack at the police station—

Cisco’s thoughts stuttered to a halt.

_What. _

That made perfect sense in his head. Mardon attacked Joe, Cisco built the Weather Wand, Mardon attacked the police station, Cisco asked Caitlin for a favor…

And yet at the same time, none of that had ever happened. Somehow, Cisco had two versions of the same day stuck in his head, and only the fact that he was clearly still in the Rogues’ temporary base made him believe that this was the correct day.

Yes. This day, the day after Dante’s birthday, was the same day as the one where he had died. He had skipped the party, but he had gone to it; Mardon was in the wind, but Mardon was in the pipeline; Barry was mentioning offhand information about Dr. Wells, but Barry was acting weird and Dr. Wells drew him aside…

Barry was acting weird.

He was saying stuff that they were saying at the exact same time. He’d played it off as a hunch, but he’d known where Mardon was. Eobard Thawne had traveled back in time.

Cisco had seen this movie before.

“Fuck,” he said out loud, not bothering to keep it quiet. He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. This answered a few things, but it brought up several more confusing questions, such as why the hell could Cisco remember another timeline or alternate universe or whatever? And – oh god – could Dr. Wells, or Thawne, or whoever he was, remember it as well?

_I’m going to die again_, Cisco thought hysterically, and he almost started laughing right then and there.

“Care to share with the class?” Snart asked drily, crouching down next to him and offering an oxygen mask because oh, right, Cisco was in shock and figuring out he was going to die sometime in the near future – again – was probably not doing any wonders for his health. He was grudgingly impressed at how quickly Lisa Snart managed to find an ambulance, gather the supplies, and get back here.

“Not really,” Cisco said, fixing the oxygen mask over his face and carefully sitting up, leaning against Dante’s chair for support. Caitlin would probably yell at him for not staying lying down, but he wasn’t sure he trusted Snart with sticking an IV in him. _Cisco _at least knew how to do that, thanks to Caitlin, so he made grabby hands at the needle and ignored how his hands were trembling.

Snart handed it over, amused.

“Why were you going into shock?” Snart asked after Cisco had managed to start the IV drip and taken several pulls of oxygen. He was still propped up against Dante’s chair, and his brother had shifted his tied hands in his lap so they were resting against the back of Cisco’s head. It was oddly comforting. Sometimes Cisco swore he hated his brother, and that the feeling was mutual – but here, at least, Dante still seemed to care about him.

Cisco shrugged in answer. He didn’t want to try to explain this to someone when _he _didn’t know what was going on.

Snart’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s the Reverse Flash?” he asked.

Cisco froze. _Shit_. He said that out loud earlier, didn’t he?

Snart reached out, like a striking snake, like a man he should have been able to trust that was moving with a speedster’s momentum, and tapped at Cisco’s chest, right above his heart.

Cisco couldn’t hold in the scream that erupted from him, and his pulse, which had only just begun to settle, picked up again, pounding in his chest. He slapped ineffectively at Snart’s hand, which had already been withdrawn, and wanted to be sick at the considering look on Snart’s face.

“Don’t,” he pleaded raggedly, voice faintly distorted by the oxygen mask, and the distortion just made him think of— “Don’t touch me.”

“So explain,” Snart said, spreading his hands in an expansive gesture. “Seems like we have to wait before you can finish those guns. I’m curious.”

The vaguely amused, malicious light in Snart’s eyes was too familiar; it was the same kind of condescending flare that had lit Dr. Wells’ eyes when talking to him down in STAR Labs’ basement, cold and utterly inhuman.

_You’re smart, Cisco, but you’re not that smart._

Cisco really was going to be sick this time.

“Come on, kid,” Snart said, less patiently this time. His eyes flicked for the briefest of moments toward Dante, and Cisco would do anything to keep his family safe. He would even bare this trauma to a Rogue. He pulled the oxygen mask down.

“The Reverse Flash, the Man in the Yellow Suit – he’s the Flash’s enemy,” Cisco said quietly. “He _hates_ him,” and Cisco wasn’t sure which ‘he’ he was referring to, Barry’s hatred toward the Reverse Flash or Eobard Thawne’s own hatred toward Barry. _It was never my intention to kill Nora. I was there to kill Barry. _“I—I figured out who he is. I figured out who the Reverse Flash is.” Cisco’s breath was coming in harsh pants now, the images dancing before his eyes. He was shaking again, if he had ever stopped.

_You and I have never been truly, properly introduced. I…am Eobard Thawne. _

“He shoved his hand through my chest,” Cisco could barely get it out. Black was encroaching on the edges of his vision. “He crushed my heart with his fist.”

Behind him, Dante made a small, wounded noise. Snart just stared at him.

“You look pretty alive to me,” Snart said.

Cisco let out a gasping, wheezing laugh. “I—I don’t—” he choked out, and stopped there, not willing to explain his suspicions about Barry and time travel and alternate universes. There was only so much information he would give to Snart. Snart could make him say this much, and no more.

Distantly, Cisco wondered if it was possible to have a panic attack while in shock, or if he was driving himself further into shock, and he decided that ultimately it didn’t matter, because it sucked either way. Cisco wished this day – or both versions of this day – had never happened.

_Work for STAR Labs, they said. Join a superhero team, they said. It will be fun, they said._

Well, they didn’t mention the high likelihood that his own boss would murder him.

With an annoyed sigh, Snart pulled the oxygen mask back up over Cisco’s face, then stood and walked away, apparently willing to let this lie for now. Probably so that Cisco didn’t pass out again and make it take longer to get their guns made. He let his head fall back and focused on his breathing again, sucking in oxygen greedily.

“You think you died?” Dante whispered to him in Spanish.

_I know I did_, Cisco thought, but all he said aloud was a low, firm, “Yes.”

* * *

Len wasn’t really sure what to make of Ramon’s tale. He’d think that Ramon was making shit up solely to fuck with him, but Len had seen flashbacks before, like he’d seen shock before. Len lived a varied and interesting life. His gut was telling him that Ramon wasn’t lying.

Which, of course, still begged the question as to why the kid was walking and talking, because despite their brave new world, Len hadn’t thought that a crushed heart was something you could recover from. And from the way that Ramon clammed up at the end, he probably knew – or at least suspected – why he was still alive.

It might be worth it, pressing him enough to figure that out, but there were more important things to ask him first.

“Could he be a metahuman?” Lisa murmured, cutting a glance toward the kid. She was smiling a bit, and Len rolled his eyes. Of course his sister actually liked Ramon, even if they were just using him.

Well, fair was fair. Len liked him a little, too – he was protective of his brother. That was important.

“Maybe,” Len said back. It would make sense. Some kind of crazy healing factor that would allow him to live through that attack, fatal as it should have been – though Len couldn’t imagine why an enemy would go to the trouble of crushing someone’s heart and then not make sure that they were actually dead.

Anyway, that didn’t quite fit. If he’d had a healing factor, why was he panicking about it _now_? Flashback, sure, but that didn’t fit. Ramon had sounded so surprised and – horrified.

_“Oh my God, he killed me.”_

That wasn’t remembering someone killing him. That was someone killing him right then and there, someone he had – trusted?

Len turned that thought over in his head. That, too, fit. The horrified betrayal in Ramon’s voice and etched on his face. Someone he knew and trusted was the Reverse Flash.

_Not the Flash himself_, Len thought critically, working it through. Ramon had distinctly stated that the Reverse Flash was the Flash’s enemy. Why bother being both? No, there must be two.

Of course, if he had discovered who the Reverse Flash was, he must also know who the Flash himself was. Len had already figured out that Ramon knew, though. It wasn’t a difficult leap of logic to make.

Len glanced over his shoulder at Ramon. The brother was resting his bound hands against the top of Ramon’s head, while Ramon was tipped back with his eyes closed, taking slow breathes. The IV seemed like it was still doing its job; Len guessed Ramon knew what he was doing when he took the needle from him.

A little longer, and then they would get Ramon to start working again. He could keep the IV; all that mattered was that he was recovered enough to finish the guns. They were all starting to get impatient.

Ten, twenty, thirty minutes passed, and Len figured they had let Ramon recover for long enough. He walked over and nudged Ramon’s leg with his foot. Ramon opened his eyes slowly, staring hard at him, and Len smiled.

“Up and at ‘em,” he said, bending over to grab Ramon by the same arm as earlier. Ramon flinched this time as he hadn’t then, but he let Len pull him up without protest. He held onto the IV stand with a white knuckled grip and allowed Len to lead him over to the guns, pieces of their innards still scattered on the table.

Len pulled out one of the chairs and sat in it, watching Ramon as he haltingly picked over the pieces, working them into place while being careful of the IV line still attached to him. On the other side of the table, Ramon’s brother watched too.

Len inspected the guns as Ramon finished them and spotted the trap immediately.

“Clever, Ramon,” he said menacingly. “But not clever enough.”

Ramon flinched _hard_, the same way he had upon immediately pulling himself out of his flashback or whatever it was, and Len watched with interest as his eyes dilated again, as one hand jumped toward his chest, as the oxygen mask that was still anchored over his face filled with puffs of air that were coming too fast again.

_Trigger_, Len thought, but all he said was, “Fix it. And don’t do it again.”

Then, of course, Lisa demanded her own gun. Len had to indulge his baby sister, and the day got longer.

* * *

Cisco finally removed the oxygen mask after an hour or two of working on Lisa Snart’s gun. At that point it was just getting in his way, and he was pretty sure that he was okay without it. Or at least he wouldn’t collapse immediately upon removing it. Caitlin would probably still be holding him down in a bed hooked up to an IV and heart monitor and oxygen mask, definitely not letting him build things until she was sure he was back in absolute health, but supervillains. What are you gonna do?

God, Cisco would give anything to be safely back in STAR Labs.

(He ignored the way that his mind whirled and danced around that concept, because it wasn’t true. Not anymore.

STAR Labs was his safe haven, his holy ground, his home, and now it had been corrupted and spat on and everything he knew of it was a lie. From the very start, it was a lie.

Now, it was his grave.)

Cisco was working out the last little details and configuration of Lisa’s gun, hands shaking from a mix of leftover shock and exhaustion, when Snart said idly from beside him, from the chair he’d been sitting in this whole time, “So. Are you like the Flash, then? A ‘metahuman’?”

Cisco stopped.

“What?” he asked. He must have heard wrong.

“Are you,” Snart repeated, drumming his fingers against the cold gun, “a metahuman?”

“No,” Cisco said, scoffing, but doubt burrowed its way inside him. He stared down at Lisa’s gun, wondering. “I’m not.”

“Hmm,” Snart said. “Would explain why you’re still alive.”

Cisco didn’t look at him, because he knew. He knew why he was still alive, and it must be because of something that Barry had done. He just couldn’t figure out _why _he remembered both of the days that had passed.

(Doubt, burrowing.)

It would explain why he remembered. If he had been affected by the particle accelerator—

“I’m not,” Cisco said again, to himself, but his hands were shaking again, making the fiddly screws for the gun shake in his hand, too, and as he dropped one on the table, it scattered all the others, flicking them around the table. Cisco closed his eyes, bowing his head, and breathed for several heartbeats, feeling the vibrations of the screws knocking against each other and slowly settling on the table his hands were pressed against.

_I can’t be a metahuman. That’s not possible. I would _know.

_Wouldn’t I?_

Cisco didn’t want to be a metahuman. The very idea of it was terrifying, especially because of the fact that of all the metahumans that they had met and faced so far, only two of them had actually ended up being good people. Three, if you counted Bette, but she had died.

It seemed like those were your only options as a metahuman: a criminal, locked up in the Pipeline – or death.

Cisco had had enough of dying in his life already, thanks.

* * *

Cisco hastily revised his earlier assessment. Death wasn’t so bad. He knew that from experience. If it wasn’t a betrayal, it came from someone he’d _always _known was a supervillain, if it was to protect someone he loved—

Cisco wasn’t afraid to die to protect Barry.

It turned out he wasn’t willing to let Dante do the same.

* * *

He could hear their echoing voices before he rounded the corner and made his way into the Cortex, pausing in the doorway. Barry was running his hands through his hair, frustrated as he talked with Caitlin and Wells, trying to figure out some way to find him. He could see Dr. Wells sitting in front of one of the monitors, scanning it carefully, and Cisco couldn’t bear to watch him. He focused on his friends instead, on the conversation that they were having.

“I’m back,” he said, trying for, if not a cheerful tone, at least an even voice. He had to pretend. He can’t do anything otherwise.

Everyone wheeled around in shock. Before Caitlin could say anything, Barry was in front of him, arms raised like he wants to hug Cisco or maybe check him over. Cisco wasn’t proud of it, but he flinched back. It was too fast, Barry was too suddenly in front of him, and his best friend’s face crumpled a little bit but he didn’t say anything about it, just, “Cisco, oh my god, Cisco, you’re okay.”

He didn’t want to be scared of Barry, he didn’t want to be scared of his best friend, but then again, he hadn’t ever thought that his mentor – _father figure, be honest with yourself, Cisco_ – would kill him either. And now here he was.

“What happened? How did you escape?” Barry had backed up, but he was still giving Cisco a concerned once over. Yeah, Cisco was well aware he looked like shit. He wasn’t sure how he was still standing. If he did anything _other _than just stand here, he probably collapse.

This deserved to be said, though.

“I’m sorry,” Cisco said. “Barry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” He could feel his voice wavering, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, because Cisco _loved _people, loved these people here specifically, and betraying them to the likes of Snart—it cut him up inside. Almost as much as being betrayed himself had.

“Cisco,” Caitlin’s voice was soft, hesitant. He made himself ignore it.

“He, um, he tortured my brother,” Cisco said. “And, and it wouldn’t have mattered if it was me, he could have killed me, he could have—” Unwilling, his eyes slid to Dr. Wells, despite swearing to himself that he wouldn’t. It killed him, that he could still read the emotions sliding under the quasi-neutral mask, angry but also concerned, like Dr. Wells actually gave a damn about Cisco, like he wouldn’t kill him the second his usefulness ran out. “I would die for you, you know that—”

“Whoa, hey, hold on,” Barry said, cutting off Cisco’s babbling. “No one’s asking you to…”

“He knows who you are, Barry,” Cisco said, miserable. Shaking, always shaking, tears trailing down his face. “Cold said he was going to kill my brother if I didn’t tell him who, who the Flash is. They were going to kill my _brother_.”

Barry paused, like he wasn’t sure what to make of that, while Caitlin gasped.

“I’m sorry,” Cisco repeated helplessly, his voice breaking. “If it were just me – you _know _I wouldn’t have ever – but Dante. I’m so sorry.”

“No, hey, no, it’s not your fault,” Barry said, hushed, and Cisco thought he might mean it, underneath it all, but it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Barry couldn’t forgive him for this. Cisco just needed to tell them the truth, away from Dr. Wells’ eyes, and then get out of here. He couldn’t put them in any more danger than they already were, and he couldn’t stay here to work under Dr. Wells anymore. “I’m the one who put you in that situation, I’m the one who should be sorry.”

Barry moved in for a hug, because Barry Allen was an octopus hugger full of love and warmth and Cisco usually adored that about him, but right now, he couldn’t take it. He was exhausted and he had betrayed his best friend to the enemy and his murderer was sitting pleasantly in the room with the rest of them. He could almost hear, even now, the dark, discordant thrum of power around the Reverse Flash, the way that energies seemed to warp around Eobard Thawne once Cisco knew who he really was, the vibrations of his hand easily phasing through the center of his chest until it could circle around his heart and regain solidity.

It was too much. As Cisco flinched back again, hands protectively raised like that would do _anything _against a speedster, he realized that he had finally pushed himself too far. He was under too much stress, and his body decided it was time to take a step back from reality.

For the second time that day, Cisco collapsed.

* * *

Even without Barry forcing it, life seemed a little slower to him than it ever had been before the lightning. Not generally noticeable in everyday life, not affecting him so much that it really bothered him – but like his metabolism, he constantly noticed this way the lightning had changed him. If he focused, he could purposefully take in his surroundings at inhuman speed, making things seem slower around him. It occasionally happened involuntarily, like when adrenaline was pumping or he was angry or in endless circumstances, so that he had to take microseconds of concentration – microseconds that seemed longer to him than anyone else – to settle himself back _down _to as regular a pace as he ever got.

They had all been so _worried. _

It wasn’t surprising, then, that he could almost see the flinch before it happened. In slow motion, he watched the way that Cisco backed away from him, terrified, and then the way that something flared in his eyes before they blanked, closed, and Cisco was falling. Caitlin didn’t have a chance to shout before Barry had caught him.

“Get him on the bed!” Caitlin ordered, already running there herself, Dr. Wells following closely behind.

* * *

Cisco woke up fast, throwing himself up as if that could help him avoid a man moving at a speedster’s pace, the hand going straight toward his chest to dig in. His heart pounded frantically in his chest and as he jerked away he felt something restraining his hand, a frenetic beeping filling the air, driving him further into panic—

“Cisco!” Caitlin’s voice cut sharply through the air as she suddenly appeared before him. Cisco shuddered to a halt. He didn’t know what to do if she was here. Would Thawne let her live, or would he kill her too, on the off chance that he had told her anything?

“Cisco,” Caitlin said again, softer. “You’re safe. You’re in the Cortex at STAR Labs, do you remember? You passed out.”

Cisco took gasping breaths and took in the room around him. She was right, of course. He recognized the cot that he was lying on, though until now it had always been from the perspective of fixing Barry up on it. His hand was trapped because it was attached to an IV line; that beeping was his heart, the monitor displaying his panic for all to read. He and Dante had been taken by Cold, and that was all that anyone knew.

They didn’t know anything about Wells.

“Fuck,” Cisco said, but he leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face.

“You gave us quite a scare, Mr. Ramon,” came a pleasant voice from his side, and Cisco barely kept himself from jumping out of his skin. The monitor displayed his unease anyway.

“Would you turn that off?” he demanded. He couldn’t look at Dr. Wells just yet. It would probably be easy for Wells to read him anyway, but at least his heartbeat wouldn’t be giving him away immediately.

“It’s so I can make sure—” Caitlin started.

“Turn it _off_,” Cisco said.

Caitlin seemed thrown by the tone of his voice, but she obviously read the desperation in his face; even if she didn’t understand it, she did as he requested. Only then did Cisco allow himself to face Wells. He was patiently waiting, sitting at the side of Cisco’s bed.

“How long was I out?” Cisco asked, his eyes skittering over Wells’ face and away. He carefully didn’t direct the question solely at Wells, tossing it out for all and sundry who might answer him.

“Several hours,” Wells said, because of course he would be the one to respond. “Barry has already taken care of Cold and the Rogues.” His mouth twisted a little, obviously displeased at how Barry must have handled it. Cisco felt a surge of vindictive pleasure at the thought that Wells didn’t approve. “He’s on his way back—”

A blur of light, movement that Cisco felt in his bones as the moment before the crack of thunder, and a rushing, comforting wind as Barry skidded into the Cortex and then to Cisco’s side.

“You’re awake!” Barry said.

“—now,” Dr. Wells finished, reluctantly amused. He pushed back a little from the side of Cisco’s bed, allowing Barry to crowd close instead. Cisco tried to pretend he couldn’t immediately breathe easier because of that.

“Yeah,” Cisco said, taking in the expression of relief on Barry’s face, the relaxed cant of his shoulders, and realizing that he mustn’t have made himself clear earlier, because Barry was only looking at him with concern. He wasn’t angry; he wasn’t keeping his distance like he should be. He should be outraged by what Cisco had done.

As soon as he came back to himself, though, he would surely remember that. He would remember that Cisco had betrayed him. It was better to nip the whole thing in the bud.

“I’ll go start packing my things,” Cisco muttered, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and starting to stand up.

“Whoa, whoa!” Barry yelped, hands outstretched, at the same moment that Caitlin snapped out, “Lay back down right now, Cisco Ramon!”

“What are you talking about?” Barry asked as Cisco froze on the edge of the bed, caught in place for crucial seconds by the uncompromising tone of Caitlin’s voice.

“I sold you out to Cold, Barry,” Cisco said, exhausted. “I built them _weapons_. I can’t – I shouldn’t be here any more. I don’t want to keep putting you in danger.”

“It’s _not your fault_,” Barry said, somehow sounding even fiercer than he had hours ago, before Cisco’s collapse. Which was funny, because Wells had said he’d stopped the Rogues (Rogues? Was that the new name for Cold and his men? …Cisco actually kind of liked it, dammit) and he must have had the evidence of Cisco’s betrayal right in front of him.

“Sure,” Cisco said, not meeting his eyes, and started levering himself up again. Barry and Caitlin both made deeply disapproving noises – he assumed at him still trying to stand and stagger away with at least the smallest modicum of dignity left intact – but Dr. Wells’ soft cough gathered all of their attentions. Years of conditioning, of hope for approval, overcame a day and a half of terror: Cisco’s gaze went straight to Wells, Barry and Caitlin’s with him.

“If I could talk to Cisco alone for a moment?” Wells asked, in a way that wasn’t really a request. Cisco felt unease shiver up his spine.

Barry and Caitlin wore mulish expressions, but they trooped out of the medbay and further into the main section of the Cortex, ostentatiously starting to poke around on the computers and talk to each other.

Cisco wanted to scream.

“You going to yell at me?” he said instead, trying to hide the tremor in his voice because he not-so-secretly wondered if Dr. Wells didn’t want to do something _else_ to him for putting the Flash in danger.

They were all expendable to Eobard Thawne. Except for Barry.

Except for the Flash.

_The Flash – and the Flash’s speed – is the key to my returning to my world. To my time. _

_And no one is going to prevent that from happening. _

Dr. Wells sighed. He removed his glasses and rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “We were all very concerned over your disappearance,” he said, settling the glasses back. Cisco was selfishly grateful at the slight difference between Wells with and without glasses. Wells could still murder him easily, but with the glasses Cisco could almost trick his mind into believing this wasn’t the same man. “And your collapse. You are an integral part of this team, Mr. Ramon. I don’t think any of us would know what to do without you.”

_You’re smart – but you’re not that smart, _Thawne had said. Honestly, because he had nothing to lose. Because he was going to kill Cisco anyway. So it didn’t matter what he said.

_You’re a liar, _Cisco thought now. “I’m not going to put Barry in danger again,” he said. _But I’m going to warn him what a danger **you **are. _

“Listen to me,” Dr. Wells said intently, leaning forward in his chair. “You think you made a mistake by telling Cold who the Flash really is? Fine. You are _wrong_. You were given the choice between two people that you love, and that is never an easy thing to face. That might be the hardest dilemma you could _ever _face, but Cisco, believe me when I say that none of us hold that against you. I dare say we can be proud of the choice that you made. What you proved today was not that you lack loyalty, but that you have an abundance of it, and that you love your friends _and_ your family.”

Cisco kept silent.

“The reason,” Wells said, “that we all want you to stay is that we love you, too.” He leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. Cisco still didn’t speak, something coiling tensely inside him.

_Don’t say it_, he pleaded mentally. _Don’t you dare say it._

“Now, I am not a parent,” Wells continued, the same kind of intent sincerity bleeding into his voice that Cisco had heard all too recently. “But in many ways,”—_no no no no **please **no_—“you have shown me”—_NO—_“what it’s like to have a son.”

Even expecting it, Cisco’s whole body tensed, terrified beyond belief. He could only be glad that Caitlin had unplugged the heart monitor like he had begged her to or he was uncomfortably sure that it would be going crazy. As it was, he quickly ducked his head to try to mask the abject terror that was surely splashed all over his face.

_Forgive me, but to me you’ve been dead for centuries. _

“Thanks, Dr. Wells,” Cisco whispered, bile in his throat. “I’ll—I’ll think about it.”

He could feel Wells’ searching gaze linger on him before the man finally turned and rolled out of the room.

**Author's Note:**

> just to make it explicitly clear: cisco vibed being murdered at the exact same moment that it happened in the other timeline. and he's been accidentally ignoring the warning signs that he has powers for at least however many months barry's been awake.


End file.
